Were we better off before industrialization?

MKULTRABOY · Mar 4, 2010

phattonez said:
I don't mind that. If you want to give to charity then that's fine, but don't force people to be charitable. That's nothing more than theft.

Then this is a stickup by the democratic will of the people. Deal with it.

It's not okay, in the twenty first century representative action in the past accounts for the living wage nowadays.

phattonez said:
You're trying to say that wages only rose because of government intervention.

No, I'm not, your perception of what I am implying is seriously skewed. Wages rose for many reasons, but if it weren't for a raise in the federal min wage millions of americans would not have a living wage, even working all day. You would sacrifice such people to your market fundamentalist ideals.

This is for ethereal too; amazingly, he's never heard of this:
[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_fundamentalism]Market fundamentalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

You know nothing of research, so go back home and stop commenting on the subject. Have you ever even seen an article in a scientific journal? I seriously doubt it.

Can you even participate in scholarly discourse? From your posts so far I strongly doubt it.

Yea, prostitution is much better than sewing stuff...

Yeah sewing stuff and barely making enough to eat. I dont know what psychological strata you reside in, but you weren't able to gather from the context of the thread that they would be hypothetically choosing prostitution (though I don't know how you chose that subject) for lack of any choice besides abject poverty. But Im sure letting them starve to death is the humane thing.

It just seems to me like war is a terrible thing to live through. The fear, the death... the sabotage!!!

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4PN7Xbexq4"]YouTube- BEASTIE BOYS - SABOTAGE - High Quality[/ame]

phattonez · Mar 4, 2010

SE102 said:
Then this is a stickup by the democratic will of the people. Deal with it.

That's not the society that I want to live in.

No, I'm not, your perception of what I am implying is seriously skewed. Wages rose for many reasons, but if it weren't for a raise in the federal min wage millions of americans would not have a living wage, even working all day. You would sacrifice such people to your market fundamentalist ideals.

You really think that minimum wage gives people a living wage and helps them to work all day? Read here:

Economics in One Lesson, The Lesson Applied, Minimum Wage Laws

Can you even participate in scholarly discourse? From your posts so far I strongly doubt it.

I simply couldn't stand him badmouthing research because it's the field that I hope to get into. I see the work that they kind of do and believe me, it's more than penis research.

Glinda · Mar 4, 2010

NoJingoLingo said:
I think more of them are working on the next viagra/penis enlargement/baldness cure/or some other way to make big money. I think more of them are working on drugs that don't cure but maintain so that they have you as an ATM for years.

I think University researchers are basically the only ones working on the really important things.

phattonez said:
:rofl, you know nothing of research, so go back home and stop commenting on the subject. Have you ever even seen an article in a scientific journal? I seriously doubt it.

You know, when YOU don't know what you're talking about, and you rofl at someone who does, it kinda makes you look, well.... dumb. :shrug:

Today's Big Pharma is FAR more interested in making a buck than it is in saving lives.

Pushing Prescriptions: Drug Lobby Second to None

WASHINGTON, July 7, 2005 — The pharmaceutical and health products industry has spent more than $800 million in federal lobbying and campaign donations at the federal and state levels in the past seven years, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found. Its lobbying operation, on which it reports spending more than $675 million, is the biggest in the nation. No other industry has spent more money to sway public policy in that period. Its combined political outlays on lobbying and campaign contributions is topped only by the insurance industry.

The drug industry's huge investments in Washington—though meager compared to the profits they make—have paid off handsomely, resulting in a series of favorable laws on Capitol Hill and tens of billions of dollars in additional profits. They have also fended off measures aimed at containing prices, like allowing importation of medicines from countries that cap prescription drug prices, which would have dented their profit margins. Pfizer, the world's largest drug company, made a profit of $11.3 billion last year, out of sales of $51 billion.

Marketing Maladies

Annually, the industry spends nearly twice as much on marketing as it spends on research and development, although drug companies report neither total precisely. Various news reports estimate that the industry spent anywhere between $30 billion to $60 billion on marketing in 2004. The trade group PhRMA estimates its members spent $39 billion on R&D that year. As this table shows, the same year, 11 major companies reported spending close to $100 billion on marketing, along with administrative expenses not categorized separately. Those companies reported spending $50 billion on R&D.

In 2004, Pfizer spent almost $120 million for media ads for Lipitor, the world's number-one selling prescription drug, while companies promoting erectile dysfunction treatments Viagra, Levitra and Cialis spent $425 million. Direct to consumer advertisement has also grown significantly: from $791 million in 1996 to $3.8 billion in 2004.

phattonez said:
I simply couldn't stand him badmouthing research because it's the field that I hope to get into. I see the work that they kind of do and believe me, it's more than penis research.

NJL isn't badmouthing research, you goof. She's badmouthing Big Pharma. If you're not able to figure that out, you're not ready for the field you are pursuing, and when your Big Pharma overlords tell you to research limp dick syndrome, you'll research limp dick syndrome.

NoJingoLingo · Mar 4, 2010

nerv14 said:
The elderly today are much healthier then the elderly in the past. Some of my grandparents are still very healthy, mentally and physically, and that would have been unheard of in the past.

Unheard of? Seriously, people living in the pre-industrial era were much healthier and barring fatal diseases, lived just as long as people today. We have libraries full of examples. How old was John Adams when he died, or George Washington or Jefferson? There were fewer instances of physical ailments/damage to organs than we have in modern society. Sure, we've found the cure for some of those ancient diseases like small pox and TB but we've increased the occurrence of heart disease, diatetes, alzheimers, and mental illness. As I said we make nice pills to keep your illness at bay so you simply live longer with those ailments.

There are ways to avoid many of the effects of aging, but those require effort on behalf of the person. Medical technology is not free of effort. But I admit that is more debatable.

In general we work at less physical jobs and therefore get less exercise.

But today many people live to become elderly when they would have died earlier in the past.

True, but only if you would have died from a disease we've cured or can control. But the general populace doesn't live to be 100.

Additionally, avoiding diseases and early death, is the same as increasing our lifespan any way you cut it though. Even contemporary diseases don't compare to the other diseases that have been elliminated.

Like I said, our lifespan hasn't increased, people don't generally live longer than they used to, more people simply live longer. Semantically there is a difference.

NoJingoLingo · Mar 4, 2010

Ethereal said:
Would you prefer they starve or became prostitutes?

False choice.

NoJingoLingo · Mar 4, 2010

Ethereal said:
Yea, prostitution is much better than sewing stuff...:roll:

Getting paid a decent wage is better than slave labor.

NoJingoLingo · Mar 4, 2010

phattonez said:
:rofl, you know nothing of research, so go back home and stop commenting on the subject. Have you ever even seen an article in a scientific journal? I seriously doubt it.

I have, and I believe the vast majority of research comes from universities and non-profit research centers.

Ethereal · Mar 4, 2010

NoJingoLingo said:
False choice.

No, it's not. Those are pretty much the only options available to children trying to find work in the third world.

In 2000, for example, the BBC did an expose on sweatshop factories in Cambodia with ties to both Nike and the Gap. The BBC uncovered unsavory working conditions, and found several examples of children under 15 years of age working 12 or more hour shifts.

After the BBC expose aired, both Nike and the Gap pulled out of Cambodia, costing the country $10 million in contracts, and costing hundreds of Cambodians their jobs.

There are lots more examples like that one.

In the early 1990s, the United States Congress considered a piece of legislation called the "Child Labor Deterrence Act," which would have taken punitive action against companies benefiting from child labor. The Act never passed, but the public debate it triggered put enormous pressure on a number of multinational corporations. One German garment maker that would have been hit with trade repercussions if the Act had passed laid off 50,000 child workers in Bangladesh. The British charity organization Oxfam later conducted a study which found that thousands of those laid-off children later became prostitutes, turned to crime, or starved to death.

The United Nations organization UNICEF reports that an international boycott of the Nepalese carpet industry in the mid-1990s caused several plants to shut down, and forced thousands of Nepalese girls into prostitution.

In 1995, a consortium of anti-sweatshop groups threw the spotlight on football (soccer) stitching plants in Pakistan. In particular, the effort targeted enforcing a ban on sweatshop soccer balls by the time the 1998 World Cup began in France. In response, Nike and Reebok shut down their plants in Pakistan and several other companies followed suit. The result: tens of thousands of Pakistanis were again unemployed. According to UPI, mean family income in Pakistan fell by more than 20%.

A World Connected - Sweatshops and Globalization

If you've ever contributed in any way to the shut down of a sweatshop in a third world country, then you've contributed to the deaths or sexual exploitation of children.

:2wave:

Ethereal · Mar 4, 2010

NoJingoLingo said:
Getting paid a decent wage is better than slave labor.

You have no understanding of economics, do you? If you forced companies to pay them a "decent wage", there would be no incentive to hire them in the first place. The only reason they have a job is because they're able to underbid other laborers. If you artificially raise their wages, they'll just get underbid by someone else.

Basic econ, that...

phattonez · Mar 4, 2010

Glinda said:
NJL isn't badmouthing research, you goof. She's badmouthing Big Pharma. If you're not able to figure that out, you're not ready for the field you are pursuing, and when your Big Pharma overlords tell you to research limp dick syndrome, you'll research limp dick syndrome.

:rofl, I must be one big prick, because here I thought that most funding for research comes from the government. I must be losing it. :roll:

Private companies then are going to fill in for whatever research is not done by the government, because they can just leach off of government research.

phattonez · Mar 4, 2010

NoJingoLingo said:
Getting paid a decent wage is better than slave labor.

Who is a slave in a free market? Please, do tell.

NoJingoLingo · Mar 4, 2010

Ethereal said:
No, it's not. Those are pretty much the only options available to children trying to find work in the third world.

If you've ever contributed in any way to the shut down of a sweatshop in a third world country, then you've contributed to the deaths or sexual exploitation of children.

:2wave:

What a big steaming pile of sophistry. So let me get this straight, Nike and the gap were caught running sweatshops in Cambodia and instead of cleaning up the facilities, not hiring children, not making people work 12+ hour shifts and providing a decent wage (or providing decent wage and working conditions in the first place) they pulled their operations and sent these workers into a worse position. You want to blame people who find this abhorrent? You really are.... never mind, you're not worth the points.

Nike =

BEAVERTON, Ore., Sept. 14— Nike Inc. said today that its first-quarter profit rose 10 percent, beating Wall Street forecasts.

The company, based in Beaverton, posted net income of $210 million, or 77 cents a share, for the three months ended Aug. 31, compared with $200 million, or 70 cents a share, in the period a year earlier.

Revenue rose 5 percent, to $2.6 billion from $2.5 billion a year earlier.

The Gap=

GPS Financials
Sales $14.197 bil
Profits $1.102 bil
Assets $8.43 bil
Employees 134000.0

Yeah, damn me for wanting them to treat their employees like humans. :doh

NoJingoLingo · Mar 4, 2010

Ethereal said:
You have no understanding of economics, do you?

I believe I have a better grasp on economics than you have on being decent to your fellow man.

If you forced companies to pay them a "decent wage", there would be no incentive to hire them in the first place.

You must be right because unemployment is at 100% because of the minimum wage... :doh do you bother to think about what you say or do you just assume everyone can be steamrolled like you surely do in bar-guments.

The only reason they have a job is because they're able to underbid other laborers. If you artificially raise their wages, they'll just get underbid by someone else.

Unless, for the sake of society, you are regulated by a minimum wage. :2wave: and amazingly enough, we STILL have businesses operating in this country since the minimum wage was begun in 1938, despite your ignorant premises.

Basic econ, that...

Basic social studies, that...

Scarecrow Akhbar · Mar 4, 2010

For some inexplicable reason, the Lefties think that when they force a company to raise wages at gun point that the company won't adjust the number of employees downwards until their wage expenses are close to what they were before the Lefties interfered.

Companies facing higer wage expenses cut back on non-regulated compensation, they cut back on number of employees, number of hours worked, shift employees from full-time to part-time, allow their workforce to dimish via attrition, automate to remove workers, simply don't hire new employees.

You'd figure after a hundred plus years of watching government screw up economies in Europe and the Americas that the Left would see the idiocy of their ways.

But they don't.

DrunkenAsparagus · Mar 4, 2010

NoJingoLingo said:
Either you are really ignorant of farming or you're just flatly disingenuous.

Sweatshops do not allow for the accumulation of wealth because as the definition of the name implies, you don't get paid ****. The pay allowed you to live in poverty. It would have been a rare thing in the early 20th century to find someone leaving the farm to go work in a sweat shop unless the farm was sold/repossessed. In other words, out of desperation. The majority of sweatshop workers were immigrants that had no farm in the USA to begin with.

You can't compare sweatshop areas to modern Western Living standards. Sweatshops routinely pay 2-3xs the average wage in the areas that they're set up in. They're also typically much safer. There's a reason why people try really hard to get into them. Like it or not that's how impoverished nations develop. It's how we, the Europeans, and East Asians developed. China and India are developing thanks to them. Sweatshops rule

NoJingoLingo · Mar 4, 2010

Scarecrow Akhbar said:
For some inexplicable reason, the Lefties think that when they force a company to raise wages at gun point that the company won't adjust the number of employees downwards until their wage expenses are close to what they were before the Lefties interfered.

Companies facing higer wage expenses cut back on non-regulated compensation, they cut back on number of employees, number of hours worked, shift employees from full-time to part-time, allow their workforce to dimish via attrition, automate to remove workers, simply don't hire new employees.

You'd figure after a hundred plus years of watching government screw up economies in Europe and the Americas that the Left would see the idiocy of their ways.

But they don't.

Believe me, I don't disagree that the minimum wage is imperfect but if there has to be imperfection I'd rather tip the scale in the poor man's direction. I'm funny like that, caring and all. Rich guys will be just fine but poor people rarely get to "fine". *shrug* it's the price you pay to live a decent life and marvel at the nutbags around you.

DrunkenAsparagus · Mar 4, 2010

NoJingoLingo said:
Getting paid a decent wage is better than slave labor.

You don't know what slave labor is.

DrunkenAsparagus · Mar 4, 2010

NoJingoLingo said:
Believe me, I don't disagree that the minimum wage is imperfect but if there has to be imperfection I'd rather tip the scale in the poor man's direction. I'm funny like that, caring and all. Rich guys will be just fine but poor people rarely get to "fine". *shrug* it's the price you pay to live a decent life and marvel at the nutbags around you.

What if my labor is worth less than $7.50 an hour to any potential employer?

NoJingoLingo · Mar 4, 2010

DrunkenAsparagus said:
You can't compare sweatshop areas to modern Western Living standards. Sweatshops routinely pay 2-3xs the average wage in the areas that they're set up in. They're also typically much safer. There's a reason why people try really hard to get into them. Like it or not that's how impoverished nations develop. It's how we, the Europeans, and East Asians developed. China and India are developing thanks to them. Sweatshops rule

Yeah, they pay great and are nice and safe, there's no exploitation or owing to the company store... that's why we lovingly call them sweatshops.

:spin: "I burned my hand on the stove but ya think I'm gonna spare my boy? **** no, let the little bastard learn the way I did".

NoJingoLingo · Mar 4, 2010

DrunkenAsparagus said:
You don't know what slave labor is.

Says the little rich white boy to the 64 year old black man... :doh :rofl

DrunkenAsparagus · Mar 4, 2010

NoJingoLingo said:
Yeah, they pay great and are nice and safe, there's no exploitation or owing to the company store... that's why we lovingly call them sweatshops.

:spin: "I burned my hand on the stove but ya think I'm gonna spare my boy? **** no, let the little bastard learn the way I did".

Never said it was perfect. The entire point is that they're better than what those people already have. That's why they work there. It is a step up for them to industrialize and raise their standards of living more. If you have a better way than what has been done in every industrialized country, I'd love to hear it.

NoJingoLingo said:
Says the little rich white boy to the 64 year old black man... :doh :rofl

And my ancestors were mostly fishermen. Does that mean that I know the first thing about baiting hooks? The people in these sweatshops choose to work there, because it's better than what they have. Of course they'd be dumb to not work in a sweatshop. That doesn't make it slavery. That's like saying that it's slavery for me to accept a raise. If someone physically coerced them, then you'd have a point. Again, if you have a better way to raise their living standards , I'd love to hear it.

washunut · Mar 4, 2010

NoJingoLingo said:
Believe me, I don't disagree that the minimum wage is imperfect but if there has to be imperfection I'd rather tip the scale in the poor man's direction. I'm funny like that, caring and all. Rich guys will be just fine but poor people rarely get to "fine". *shrug* it's the price you pay to live a decent life and marvel at the nutbags around you.

You probably are a rich ( hard to define)guy in disguise.

Even the minimum wage is not close to enough to live if are in a major Northeast city, perhaps anywhere. If you are serious about paying people a living wage then the issue most important is making it easier for people to organize. That and FAIR trade with foreign nations.

NoJingoLingo · Mar 4, 2010

DrunkenAsparagus said:
Never said it was perfect. The entire point is that they're better than what those people already have. That's why they work there. It is a step up for them to industrialize and raise their standards of living more. If you have a better way than what has been done in every industrialized country, I'd love to hear it.

And my ancestors were mostly fishermen. Does that mean that I know the first thing about baiting hooks? The people in these sweatshops choose to work there, because it's better than what they have. Of course they'd be dumb to not work in a sweatshop. That doesn't make it slavery. That's like saying that it's slavery for me to accept a raise. If someone physically coerced them, then you'd have a point. Again, if you have a better way to raise their living standards , I'd love to hear it.

No **** it's not perfect. It doesn't take much for a ****ing international multi-billion dollar corporation to treat people like ****ing people but no, in order to add that extension to their penis they need to treat humans like **** anytime they can.

Oh and do a little math with my age. My grandparents we share croppers and before them...

NoJingoLingo · Mar 4, 2010

washunut said:
You probably are a rich ( hard to define)guy in disguise.

Even the minimum wage is not close to enough to live if are in a major Northeast city, perhaps anywhere. If you are serious about paying people a living wage then the issue most important is making it easier for people to organize. That and FAIR trade with foreign nations.

I am well off now, no need for a disguise.

Come down south, you'd be amazed at what people can live off.

Ethereal · Mar 5, 2010

NoJingoLingo said:
What a big steaming pile of sophistry. So let me get this straight, Nike and the gap were caught running sweatshops in Cambodia and instead of cleaning up the facilities, not hiring children, not making people work 12+ hour shifts and providing a decent wage (or providing decent wage and working conditions in the first place) they pulled their operations and sent these workers into a worse position. You want to blame people who find this abhorrent? You really are.... never mind, you're not worth the points.

Nike =
The Gap=

No relevant counter-points to my argument.

Yeah, damn me for wanting them to treat their employees like humans. :doh

Wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which one fills up first.

Were we better off before industrialization?

Well, were we?

Yes

No

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MKULTRABOY

phattonez

Catholic

Glinda

You kids get off my lawn!

NoJingoLingo

NoJingoLingo

NoJingoLingo

NoJingoLingo

Ethereal

Ethereal

phattonez

Catholic

phattonez

Catholic

NoJingoLingo

NoJingoLingo

Scarecrow Akhbar

DrunkenAsparagus

Devourer of Poor Children

NoJingoLingo

DrunkenAsparagus

Devourer of Poor Children

DrunkenAsparagus

Devourer of Poor Children

NoJingoLingo

NoJingoLingo

DrunkenAsparagus

Devourer of Poor Children

washunut

NoJingoLingo

NoJingoLingo

Ethereal

Were we better off before industrialization?

Well, were we?

Yes

No

Catholic

You kids get off my lawn!

Catholic

Catholic

Devourer of Poor Children

Devourer of Poor Children

Devourer of Poor Children

Devourer of Poor Children

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